‘The Owner isn’t stupid. Maybe he disguised himself as a policeman, a handyman, or a postman. Or maybe…’
Beatrice nodded, fighting against the sense of helpless frustration rising inside her. ‘Or maybe they knew each other.’
It was a mild evening, and most of the neighbours hadn’t been home at the time the crime was committed. While Drasche and Ebner inspected the flat and stairwell, the others tried to find someone who might have seen the Owner.
An old woman living in one of the ground-floor flats reported that she had heard a dull thud: ‘As though someone had dropped something heavy.’
‘That was it? No screams?’ Florin probed.
‘Yes, but I thought they were coming from the TV.’ The neighbours who lived next to Sigart were only arriving home now, and were clearly horrified. By 10 p.m., the residents from the other flat downstairs still hadn’t come back.
‘It must have been very loud. There was a struggle – we heard part of it on the phone,’ Beatrice explained to the tenants in the flat above Sigart. ‘Did you not hear anything?’
The man lowered his gaze. ‘We did. He was screaming and banging against the walls, but, the thing is – that was nothing new. In the last few years I’ve rung his bell again and again whenever he had those… incidents, but he never opened up, and I knew, you see… I mean, the thing with his family.’ He looked back up. ‘I didn’t want to be a nuisance. He always made it clear that he wasn’t interested in any contact or help.’
We were too slow, thought Beatrice, feeling the hate well up inside her, a feeling that had no place in her work. She balled her hands into fists and burrowed her fingernails into her palms; normally that helped.
‘Wenninger? Kaspary?’ Drasche’s muffled voice echoed out of Sigart’s flat. ‘Come here, but be careful!’
When they got there, he was kneeling next to the upturned table and pool of blood. With his gloved hand, he pointed at something light and oblong amidst the red. ‘The killer left us some body parts again.’
‘What is it?’ They leant forwards towards Drasche.
‘Except this time he didn’t package them up for us. Do you see?’ He turned the oblong shapes around carefully.
Fingers. Beatrice went cold as she thought of Sigart’s screams. Stop it, he had yelled, his voice racked with pain and fear.
‘The little finger and ring finger of the left hand,’ Drasche clarified. ‘They must have been cut off at the same time, possibly hacked off, because the wound is sharp and the bone was severed too, I think.’ He put the fingers into one of his evidence bags and held it out towards Beatrice.
She took it, noticing a detail that turned her suspicion into certainty. ‘They’re Sigart’s fingers, for sure.’
Drasche’s eyebrows climbed up to his hairline. ‘And you know that how?’
‘I recognise the burn scars.’
They closed off the street, called the inhabitants out of the surrounding houses and questioned them about a stranger who had entered building number 33 between eight and half-past that evening. Maybe a little earlier. But no one had seen anything.
Perhaps a parcel carrier, a policeman, a pizza delivery boy?
No.
They worked until long after midnight, receiving a steady supply of updates on Drasche’s discoveries: the footprints in the stairwell were a size 45, while Sigart was a size 43. The blood in the flat couldn’t just stem from the severed fingers, as the fan-shaped patterns on the walls suggested injury to a large blood vessel. ‘At a height of around one hundred and sixty centimetres from the floor, it was probably Sigart’s carotid artery. Or the other man’s, but if that were the case he wouldn’t have been able to get away.’ It was clear from Drasche’s expression that he hadn’t seriously considered that possibility, but wanted to state it nonetheless. ‘I’ll be able to tell you relatively soon whether the blood comes from two different people or just one.’
Finally, in a dark corner next to the cellar exit, Ebner found Sigart’s mobile, smeared with blood. He had clearly been trying to cling onto the connection with Beatrice. That night, the thought haunted her into her sleep.
It happened the next morning, just after she had brushed her teeth, and without any warning. Beatrice huddled on the floor and tried not to lose consciousness, opening and closing her fingers to bring the feeling back, forcing away the image of Sigart’s severed fingers as she did so. That would only make it all worse.
She hadn’t had a panic attack this bad in years, and even though she knew what was happening to her, the thought remained that – this time – it could be something serious.
A heart attack, cardiac arrest, sudden death. She gasped for air, trying to bring her pulse back under control with the strength of willpower alone. She followed the leapfrogging of her heartbeat with a mixture of amusement and despair.
Breathe. Breathe. Think about something else.
Back then, the psychologist had advised her to accept the fear, to greet it and let it go again.
Hello, fear.
It was there, pounding inside her chest, her temples, her neck, her stomach, but it didn’t respond to Beatrice’s greeting. Didn’t reveal where it had come from so suddenly.
But Beatrice knew what had awoken it. She lay flat out on her back, closed her eyes and tried to stay perfectly still. It felt as though her lungs had withered to hard, walnut-sized clumps.
She pictured Evelyn’s face, her green eyes, her deep-red curly hair. That throaty voice. Everyone had always turned to look at her whenever she laughed.
I’m so sorry. So very sorry.
The cool tiles of the bathroom floor were pressing hard against her shoulder blades. The image of the living Evelyn faded, the disfigured features of the dead Evelyn engulfing it with all its horrific force. Beatrice tore her eyes open, concentrating on the bathroom ceiling, the dusty milk-glass lamp directly above her head.
She had to get up; there was so much to do. They had to find Sigart.
His corpse, you mean.
She managed to silence the inner voice by humming ‘I’m Walking on Sunshine’, a song that left no room for panic. Ten to fifteen minutes, she thought. It had never lasted any longer than that. You’ll make it. Of course you will.
‘Could you please tell me what on earth is wrong with you?’ They could probably hear Hoffmann’s voice even on the floor above, word for word. ‘Did you go shopping, get a manicure? Do you realise we have a case here that’s more important than your fingernails?’
Beatrice waited until she was sure she could keep her voice steady. ‘I’m sorry I’m late, but—’
‘No buts!’ yelled Hoffmann. ‘Four dead bodies in one single week! Nothing else is important right now – you don’t have a private life!’
Four? Had Sigart’s body already been found?
‘And then on top of all that you go and disobey my orders. There’ll be consequences, Kaspary, you mark my words!’
There was no doubt what he was referring to. She looked Hoffmann in the eyes, those silt-coloured, murky-puddle eyes, and waited to see if there was more. When he just shook his head silently, she left him standing there and walked past him to the office, where Florin appeared at the door with a vexed expression.
‘There are three bodies, not four.’ He gave her shoulder a quick squeeze. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said softly. ‘Just forget it.’